


Welcome to the new age

by Radiolina_936



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-01-18 04:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1415434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolina_936/pseuds/Radiolina_936
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Two thousand and fourteen.<br/>If I was in two thousand and fourteen, I did not remember anything of what had happened in the last six months or so. The blow on the head really made me lose my memory.<br/>However, I knew what was the scenario that loomed in front of me.<br/>The fucking apocalypse."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! Here I am with my first multichapter Supernatural fiction (this is going to be a failure omg)  
> So, first I have to say that all my story are written in Italian first (I'm Italian, yes yes!) then I translate them in English. If you notice any kind of mistake, I would really appreciate if you let me know so I can improve my English!  
> I'm actually still writing this story, so it will take some time for me to write it and update it, because I still have no idea how I want it to develop and how to be long.  
> The story is set in an indefined future (that maybe will be defined later) and it was born from my big big love for Radioactive by Imagine Dragons!  
> Please, I would really appreciate if you let me know what do you think of my first story in this site! :)  
> Arrivederci!  
> Chiara

I regained consciousness with a jolt, so sudden that my heart started thumping in my ears. I sat up abruptly, opening wide my eyes and breathing in gasps. I felt the air scratching my dry throat and my lungs swelling painfully against my rib cage. It felt like it was the first breath of my entire life.  
That sudden spurt was not a brilliant idea: the head started spinning and the nausea went up from my stomach. My arms gave way and, almost without realizing it, I fell back. I banged my head against the asphalt and only then I realized about the throbbing pain that seemed to drill through the skull from side to side. It must have been there since before I fell to the ground. A retching made my stomach shake, but I couldn't throw up.  
I turned to one side, while the keck made me cough like a desperate, squinting because of the dust that my breath lifted from the ground. As soon as I could breathe normally, I raised my head a few inches and spit on the ground a mixture of saliva and blood. My jaw ached.  
Someone had given me a thrashing.  
I inhaled and exhaled slowly to try to bring down the nausea. As the seconds passed, the pain expanded all over my body: as well as my head, now even my right leg hurt. I propped myself up on my elbows and checked the situation: my jeans were torn at the knee, and my own flesh was cut and blood attached the fabric to my skin like glue. The cut was deep about four inches long. I could almost see the bone.  
What the fuck happened to me ?  
I looked around. I was lying in the middle of the road and not a soul could be seen. The sky was cloudy and formed a warm and humid pall over my head. The scenery was desolate.  
I turned on my left side and started to crawl, careful to keep the injured leg straight and far from the debris on the road. I dragged the weight of my body with my elbows and I pushed forward squinting, while my eyes were watering because of the dust rising from the asphalt. The whole street was covered of gray ash.  
I got to the sidewalk and sat down on the edge, using all my strength to lift my body. My breathing was labored. My throat was dry and burning. The leg was hurting a lot, but the head was worrying me more. I touched the wound with my fingers through my hair, biting my lip when it began to throb. I looked at my hand. It was smeared with a sticky and russet substance.  
Blood.  
I sighed, trying to think positive: at least the blow to the head had caused no serious damage.  
Or did it?  
My name was Dean Winchester, my brother was Sam and my parents had been Mary and John. I didn't know what day it was, and that scared me. The last thing I remembered was Sam on a hospital bed... and before? A black sky exploded into thousands of fireballs, headed inexorably towards the Earth. I clearly remembered that I was staring at one of those comets and I saw an angel, whose wings fell off during the fall.  
My heart skipped a beat. Where was Castiel? And Sam?  
I looked around, analyzing every detail to try to get my bearings. The street was populated by the rusted carcasses of cars, many of them were dismembered and turned upside down. The walls of the buildings were gray and dirty and almost all the doors and windows had been boarded up with planks of wood.  
The atmosphere was surreal. It seemed that the city had been hit by a radioactive wave. The more I looked around, the more I realized that I knew that scenario. I had already seen before.  
The writing on the wall of the building across the street caught my attention. My flesh creeped when considering the idea that they didn't use red paint to do the writing.  
Croatoan.  
Son of a bitch...  
The bile went up in my mouth and I forced myself to spit it out. I felt my runny nose and I cleaned it with my sleeve, that smeared with blood.  
That gray and desolate landscape was quite familiar to me: I had spent there three days, that time Zachariah-the-son-of-a-bitch shot me in the future to see what the consequences would have been if I hadn't said the "big yes" to Michael. I remembered clearly, on that occasion, that I saw a "forbidden entry" sign hung to a network which had a date on it.  
Two thousand and fourteen.  
If I was in two thousand and fourteen, I did not remember anything of what had happened in the last six months or so. The blow on the head really made me lose my memory.  
However, I knew what was the scenario that loomed in front of me.  
The fucking apocalypse.  
A thought was scratching the back of my mind, while the idea that there was something more that familiar in that scene appeared in my mind. It was not the awareness that I had been in that exact place many years before. It was something more recent, but indefinite, impalpable. Like when you wake up and you still feel the taste of the dream on your tongue, while it mixes with reality, and it confuses you for the first few seconds .  
It was what was happening to me. I had the impression that I just woke up and that my memories were only a dream. That the one that was in front of me was the reality I had lived my entire life in.  
I shook my head, clearing my thoughts, and I focused on something more important. I had to find a way to get out of there , find out if there was still some form of civilization in those parts. But I couldn't even get up with my leg in that state.  
I ripped the jeans with the switchblade I found in my pocket, freeing my calf, then lifted the fabric to uncover the knee, gritting my teeth when the wound pinched. A stream of blood flowed slowly through the clotted blood and dripped on the asphalt. I didn't touch the cut : my hands were dirty and I would have risked an infection.  
I took off my shirt, remaining shirtless, and bent it to form a band. I placed it on the wound and tied the sleeves behind my knee. That wasn't a great bandage, but at least the wound wouldn't get dirtier.  
I looked around, trying to understand where I was, but I hadn't the slightest idea where I was and where I could go. My glance stopped on a bus about seventy feet from where I stood. The writing on the side was faded but I could still read the words "County Jail". A bus for the transportation of prisoners. It was the only vehicle in sight that had all four wheels and that wasn't overturned.  
I stood up supporting on my arms and holding my battered leg as straight as I could. I stood up cautiously, hoping not to be caught again by a retch. Once standing, I felt that my stomach was all good and I decided to move. I tried to shift my weight on the injured leg, but a sharp pain made my knee tremble. Bad idea.  
I sighed. The only thing I could do was to hop up to the bus. It would have been a really long way.  
After less than twenty feet, I was already tired. The left leg ached and I didn't know how much longer it could support my weight. I considered the idea of sitting on the ground for a few seconds, but I knew that if I did then I wouldn't be able to get back on my feet. I gritted my teeth and started to approach at the bus, hopping or bending down and placing my hands on the ground to walk on three legs.  
After five minutes I reached the bus. The door was wide open and I dropped on the step. I stayed there for a couple of minutes, resting my left leg, which had borne all my hundred and eighty pounds. I felt a tingle going up from the toes to the thigh, a sign that the blood was circulating.  
When I felt better, I went limping up the steps and sat on the driving seat. The keys were not inserted, nor were in any drawer or compartment - I didn't really hope for that - then I leaned over and pulled out two wires from under the dash, and I made them made contact. The engine alluded to start a few times, but nothing happened. After the fifth attempt it turned on and I sighed in relief.  
I put the injured leg under the steering wheel and I settled in order to press the accelerator while keeping it straight. That position - sitting on the outer edge of the seat, keeping the leg in tension - was very uncomfortable, but I was hoping to reach some kind of life in a few minutes, so I could as well put up with it.  
After the departure, I immediately realized that the brakes were not working just perfectly, so I continued to go at a speed of twelve miles an hour, keeping the driver's door wide open and stayed ready to jump off the bus if there was any need.  
I had no idea where I could go, so I wandered for almost an hour, finding no one. During the trip I had some difficulties in the curves, which I faced too fast. A couple of times the bus leaned dangerously to one side and I was terrified that it flipped over, but the suspensions were able to keep it straight. In those occasions I felt the adrenaline invading my body and my heart beating wildly.  
The leg continued to hurt like hell and the shirt I used as a bandage was now smeared with blood. Even if I found someone, I didn't know how they could medicate me. I'd had definitely developed an infection.  
I had already lost hope when, along a straight, I noticed the silhouette of six people to a few hundred meters away. I began to slow down immediately, since the brakes worked very badly and it would have taken more space than normal to stop the bus.  
When I was fifty yards closer, the group of men saw me - well, they saw the bus. A shot fired, and it made a perfectly round hole on the windshield and whizzed next to my ear. The second after I leaned down, while other shots exploded over me, breaking the glass. I pressed my foot on the brake as hard as I could, while the injured knee was throbbing so much that my sight began to blur, but I forced myself to stay bent.  
The men stopped firing, probably thinking that they caught me . The bus walked his last few meters, then stopped completely. I could hear a whistle in my ears. I tried to change position because when I leaned down, I was forced to bend the injured knee and now I felt like throwing up because of the pain. The fragments of glass fell to the ground from my back while I gingerly got up a few inches.  
A muffled sound of footsteps came to my ears, while my brain registered it with difficulty. "Shit," cried a voice that I couldn't recognize.  
I sat up a little, turning to the driver's door. With my head spinning and the whistle in my ears, my mind couldn't recognize the man's face staring at me.  
"It's Winchester!", I heard him cry out, before the ringing in my ears became more acute and made me pass out.


	2. Chapter 2

It took a while for me to wake up. My first thought was that I was dead, but then I slowly took control of my body, muscle by muscle, and I realized that I was lying on something. The ears uncorked and I heard the unmistakable sound of the wheels on a gravel road, accompanied by a terrible and constant shaking.  
I opened my eyes a little, trying to see something with my blurred sight. The wound to the head began to throb and I felt as if I was crushed by a tank. I felt like throwing up and the violent swaying of the vehicle didn't help at all.  
When I opened wide my eyes, I realized that I was lying on the back of a pickup, while someone - not the guy I saw earlier, but still an unknown face - bustled with my bad knee. Maybe the pain mad me wake me up .  
"Stay down! " he cried when I tried to sit up. He was just a boy, he had to be twenty five years old or so. "Don't even think to get up. " He put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down .  
I was lying on what appeared to be a plastic stretcher and I felt the shake of every pit that the van faced increased of ten thousand times . It felt like being on a roller coaster.  
"What the fuck!" I cried, when I felt pain on my leg.  
"I'm sorry," the boy said. "I'm trying to bandage the wound a little better, at least the way up to the base camp." He had taken off the shirt that I used as a temporary bandage and he was wrapping the knee with a white gauze. I gritted my teeth , trying not to complain.  
After some time, that I spent half stoned after the boy filled with painkillers, I managed to find the strength to open my mouth. "Who are you people?"  
He looked confused . "Who are we?" he repeated.  
"First you try to kill me and then you cure my knee?" I exclaimed. The words came out probably almost incomprehensible. "Who the fuck are you?"  
The pickup suddenly stopped. "We arrived," the boy decreed, without giving me an answer. In that moment I realized that another van had followed us for the entire trip. Three men came out of it, and two others from the pick-up I was in. Someone lifted the stretcher and carried me for several yards before I started to wriggle weakly, crying that I wanted to get off . No one listened to me, so I moved all my weight on one side, making the men who were carrying me skid.  
"What the hell!" exclaimed one.  
"Let me down!" I shouted.  
"You couldn't stand up," the boy that cured me explained.  
"I don't give a fuck!" I screamed as loud as I could. "You motherfuckers let me down!"  
The boy looked at the two men that were carrying me, then nodded. The stretcher leaned forward until it was almost perpendicular to the ground. I put my left foot on the ground, I loaded all my weight and I got up. Then I fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.  
"What did I way? " I heard reproach the boy. I ignored the sarcasm in his voice.  
"Dean?"  
My heart skipped a beat when I heard my name called by that voice . In the midst of strangers in an unfamiliar place, that voice was the only thing I really knew. Hearing it made me feel better.  
I looked up just in time to see Cas running down the steps of a wooden building and coming towards me. He was the same as I remembered from the forced visit of Zachariah. The hair was covering his forehead and on his cheeks there was the beard of a week. He was wearing the same crumpled shirt that was unbuttoned halfway across his chest. He bent down in front of me and kissed me.  
A murmur rose around us. Exclamations of surprise, more than anything else. But I barely noticed. My attention was focused somewhere else.  
It was the first time I kissed Cas. How many times had I dreamed of doing that? How many times did I ask myself what his reaction would have been if I took his face in my hands and I placed my lips on his ? And now it was happening, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.  
His lips were soft and smelled of incense. I felt his hand on my neck it held the hair on my nape, causing me a shiver through my body down to the groin. I had goose bumps all over my body and I remembered I was bare-chested. I opened my mouth to stick my tongue between his lips, but he broke away from me too soon.  
Cas stood, staring at me with a look that I couldn't comprehend, while I lost myself in the blue of his eyes. My ears begun to buzz, so I couldn0t hear his voice. I could see his lips moving, but no sound came out.  
He took my face in his hands, shaking and talking. This time I could hear his voice , but it seemed like a whisper to me. My sight was shaking and I didn't know how long I would be able to sit straight.  
"He's full of painkillers," said a voice from far away. Was it the boy-doctor? "We'd better take him to the infirmary."  
I was lifted by my shoulders and legs and put on the stretcher. I was carried in a huge tent and unloaded on a cot with a thin mattress that pierced all its springs in my back.  
I felt a pinch on the arm and I realized that someone stuck a needle attached to a drip. I moaned weakly, while vague figures revolved around my bed and then disappeared.  
A face materialized too close to mine. "Dean, now I'll sew your knee," he murmured. His face was blurred, but the voice was familiar to me. It was the same that warned me for the whole trip in that noisy pick-up. The child that squeezed my leg and filled me with drugs.  
The boy unwound the bandage from my leg, while waves of pain went up from my knee, forcing me to stay awake, but I gritted my teeth and tried not to complain. Then the guy got up, searching for something in a cart on the other side of the tent and returned with gloves on his hands and with something in his hand, then sat down beside the bed dragging a chair near him.  
For a moment one of the two objects shined and I recognized a syringe. I tried to rise and to draw back, but my hands were cuffed to the headboard of the bed. I tried to bend my legs, but her ankles were tied to the iron structure of the bed. When did they immobilize me?  
"Stay down, " the boy said.  
"What the fuck are you doing?" I cried, but the words came out of my mouth in a whisper.  
"It's an anesthetic," he said, as he slipped the needle into the cap of a small glass container and suck up the liquid. "I don't think it would make you happy to be sewn with all the pain."  
I wanted to tell him that I used to not use any type of drugs to sew my wounds, but I no longer had the strength to reply. I dropped my head on the pillow without complaining anymore.  
I felt a burning pain in the knee, but after a second it was gone. The boy stood up and threw the empty syringe into the drawer of a trolley next to the cot and pulled out a bottle containing a clear liquid, whose labeled "physiological", which he splashed on my wound, and it burnt as if I my meat was catching fire. I let out a moan.  
"The anesthesia has still to do its effect," said the guy . "It will be better to wait a few minutes." And he stayed there staring at me.  
I looked at him with tired eyes and at that point he looked down. "What's your name?" I whispered.  
"Hmm?" he muttered, lifting his head up.  
"What's your name?" I repeated, trying to better articulate the words .  
The boy looked at me for a few seconds before saying, "So it's true."  
"What?"  
"That you don't remember anything."  
I wasn't surprised by that revelation. I had already realized that something was wrong with me. "No, I don't remember," I replied.  
"Edward Murray," he said. "But everyone calls me Doc."  
I nodded, staring at the ceiling of the tent. "So the soldiers out there rely their lives on you? Aren't you a bit too young?"  
The boy snorted. I lifted my head a few inches to see his face and only then I realized that he had began to clean the wound. I didn't feel any pain. "I'm not too young, as they're not soldiers," he snapped. "You may have lost your memory, but you're still the same arrogant asshole that believes to be the head of an army."  
I didn’t pay much attention to his critics. While Doc was sewing the wound, my head became heavy and I let it fall back on the pillow. My mind blurred more and more because of the painkillers that introduced in my body through the needle. When I closed my eyes, I couldn't get control of my thoughts, which began to travel, blending past and present, showing images so clear that it seemed to me I was reliving my own memories.

***

Sam's arms lit up like two neon lights inside that dark ruined church. The blood coming from the cut of his hand formed rivulets on his palm, so I tied a tissue around it.  
Then he felt sick. I dragged him outside and he collapsed in the mud, leaning against the wheel of the Impala. He raised his head and his expression became terrified.  
Following his gaze, my eyes witnessed the most beautiful and terrifying spectacle of my life. Balls of fire pierced the sky as if they were comets and created a trail toward Earth. There were hundreds, maybe thousands. I couldn't estimate.  
The angels... are falling.  
I shouted Castiel's name with all the air in my lungs, but he didn't appear out of nowhere as he had always done, and I had a very bad feeling about that.  
Meanwhile, the Angels reached the ground. The first ended up in the swamp that bordered the church, causing a spray at least a couple of meters high. The speed the Angel impacted reached the one of a car launched on the highway. The impact with the water was horribly violent. The second impacted the ground a few feet from me and Sam. The speed made him slid for a few more meters, creating deep ruts in the dirt. I got up to go check him out. His neck was bent backwards in an unnatural way. I didn't even take the trouble to make sure he was dead.  
Meanwhile Sam passed away. I woke him up by shaking him, then I squeezed Crowley in the trunk and we got in the car, screeching away. Sam threw up out the window a couple of times while I was driving at full speed, trying to dodge the angels that swoop down like hail.  
Sam fainted again and I pulled over. I tried to wake him as I had done before, but in vain. He was pale and sweaty. I could barely feel his pulse .  
I took him to the nearest hospital. It was the last thing I remembered.


	3. Chapter 3

Every now and then I woke up, numb and confused. I never had enough strength to open my mouth nor to move. I was still handcuffed to the bed, while several people walked around me, watching me. The face I saw most often was the boy's, Doc. He changed the IV bags several times and talked to me, asking me how I felt, but I was never able to give an answer because I fell asleep right away.   
I couldn't realize how much time passed. It seemed like days to me, but maybe they were just a couple of hours. In any case, I spent almost all the time in some kind of half-sleep, that occasionally became real sleep.  
The only thing I knew for sure was that Castiel didn't show up.   
The leg didn't hurt and Doc had medicated the wound I had on the head with some stitches, but not even that pinched. Stuffed with antibiotics and painkillers, it would have been surprising if I felt pain.  
The angry voices were constantly out of the tent. The only one that I could recognize was Doc's, who was trying to calm each time a different person with a resolute tone. The topic of the dispute was the possibility that I had caught the Croatoan virus, given that - as far as I seemed to understand - I was gone from the base camp for almost a whole day. Doc claimed that the symptoms would have appeared within the first four hours and by the time nothing strange happened to me, so there was reason to hope for the best. The other person replied each time that, stuffed with drugs as I was, it would have been hard to figure out if I really showed signs that the virus had infected me. Doc then concluded by saying that after four hours of my arrival I would have taken a blood test to see if there was sulfur.   
When the boy stuck another needle in my arm, I realized that four hours had passed since my arrival. I mumbled something indistinct, he explained the situation to me and went to examine my blood. I wondered where he would have pulled out a device to analyze it.  
Other strange shapes showed up next to me. They were worried, because of my bluish color and the fever that continued to rise. They weren't worried about me, but for the fact that they could have been symptoms of the virus. I realized at that moment that I was sweaty and hot. Doc came back a few minutes later, explaining that the fever had to be caused by the infection to the wound of the leg, since there was no sulfur in my blood. Then he ordered to people to stay away from me, since I didn't need anyone buzzing around and criticizing me my state of health. "Not after what you did!" he exclaimed. I had no idea what he was talking about.  
After everyone left, Doc approached to me, saying gaily that I hadn't caught the Croatoan. He continued by saying that he would have taken my blood to do some exams every hour, to make sure the virus wouldn't appear unexpectedly. Then I got sleepy again.  
I was awakened by the gentle touch of a wet cloth on my face and by the sound of water falling into more water. I opened my eyes in a slit, expecting one of the many unknown faces that had walked around me in the past few hours; instead, I found myself staring at a pair of blue eyes that I knew very well.   
"Cas?" I whispered. My voice was a mess. I tried to clear my throat, but I was interrupted by a fit of coughing. A glass materialized between my lips. I drank all the water, which scratched my dry throat.  
Cas put the empty glass on the table and showed me one of his half-smiles that I always drove me crazy. His eyes were bright. "You remember me, then," he said. His voice was more hoarse than usual, as if the beard he had grown could make it more profound.  
My vision began to blur. No, damn painkillers! I wanted to look at his face for a few minutes without suddenly falling asleep. I reached out to the IV needle to remove it.  
Cas put his hand on mine. "What are you doing?" he scolded me.   
I ignored him, grabbing and pulling the IV tube. The needle came out of my body with a tingly feeling.  
"Do what you want" he said smiling, amused.  
I realized only then that I was able to move his arms freely. I cautiously moved my legs. I had been untied.   
Castiel removed the cloth from my forehead, squeezing it in a basin at his feet. He soaked it in water again, but this time he used it to wipe my face. The tissue was stained red. My face had to be covered in blood.  
"Why didn't you come before?" I roared, but my voice came out weaker than I wanted.  
"It was you who told me to stay away from you in case there was a risk that you had caught the Croatoan," he explained.   
"But... you kissed me." My voice broke.  
"Yeah, well, I got carried away."  
Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. Cas continued to wipe my face.   
"When did I tell you to stay away from me?" I asked confused.  
He looked down, as if he was remembering something. "One of the first times that we had sex."  
I was caught by another fit of coughing. Cas made me drink from a glass again.  
"The news surprised you?" he joked.   
"W-what?" I whispered, trying to hide my embarrassment.  
"Were you surprised to know that we have a sexual relationship?"   
The truth was that yes, I was surprised. But I didn't want to make him understand that. "N-no, I mean..." I sighed, unable to finish the sentence. Castiel seemed to understand my discomfort. I'd never been good at lying to him.   
"What's the last thing you remember?" he asked, becoming serious.   
"I... don't know. It's all confused. I can't see anything."  
Cas washed the cloth stained with blood in the basin and I took the opportunity to sit up, not without some difficulty. My muscles were numb for staying still for too long. The bandage of my knee forced me to keep the right leg straight, so I couldn't stretch, but moving it just for a few inches made me feel much better.  
Cas continued to wipe my face, and I saw that his eyes lingered for a second on my bare chest. "Hmm," he murmured.   
"What?" I asked.   
"Nothing. Hmm... I just remembered that I brought you a shirt," he said, taking the garment laid on the back of his chair. "As much as I like admiring your muscles, I'm afraid that you could catch a cold. I'll have other to see your chest." Then he handed me the t-shirt, with a wink.  
That surprised me. Cas was acting very different from the Cas I knew. I took the shirt and wore it with slow movements, because of my aching muscles.   
Cas leaned towards me, rubbing the damp cloth on my neck. His face was only a few inches from mine and his lips were parted. It looked like an automatic gesture dictated by the attention he was using to clean my skin, but the thought that his behavior was intentional - that he was somehow playing with me - scratched the back of my mind. But it lasted only a second.   
"Sam?" I asked point blank, clearing my throat, a little embarrassed.  
"What?" Cas murmured, budging a bit from me.  
"Where is Sam?" I repeated. The idea that what I saw during my visit in the future several years before really happened bothered me, but I pretended not to consider it.  
"Sam is not here," Cas replied evasively. The smile was gone from his face and he looked down, throwing the cloth into the basin, which splashed water on the floor.   
I opened my mouth to ask for further explanation, but we were interrupted by Doc, who entered the infirmary. "You must lie down," he scolded me, grabbing my shoulder and pushing me down. Then he realized that I had removed the IV needle. "God, I cannot leave even a second," he complained, slipping the needle into my arm. Then he glared at Cas. "Enough visits for today."  
Cas stood up, taking the bowl of water with him. He gave me a look that I couldn't understand, a mixture of pity and dejection, and walked away.  
"How's the leg?" Doc asked, glancing at the bandage but without touching it.  
"Fine," I muttered. I was not in the mood to talk. I was annoyed at the interruption: Cas could have told me something more about Sam, if Doc hadn't appeared.  
He sat just where Cas had sit just a couple of minutes earlier and pulled out a sterile needle from the trolley and a test tube. "You'll have to rest for at least a couple of days," he said, soaking a piece of cotton with disinfectant and rubbing it in the crook of the elbow, "which means that you stay still in bed without fumbling with the drip." His gaze was able to increase the scolding. Then he stuck the needle in my arm. I gasped, not for the pain but for the sudden gesture. I had never liked needles and I had been stabbed twice in the space of a few minutes.  
Doc collected my blood and put the cap on the tube. Then put a cotton ball in the little hole on my skin and made me bend the arm.  
"I have been untied," I said as he stood up.  
"It was just a precaution," said Doc, "in the event that you contracted the Croatoan and it was necessary to keep you tied. But it's not needed anymore."  
"How long have I been here?" I asked.   
"Five hours. I came to take my hourly dose of your blood," he replied, showing me the tube full.   
"Hmm," I mumbled. Only five hours. They would have been two long days.   
"What's wrong?" Doc exclaimed, exasperated.   
"Nothing, it's just that I'm bored," I muttered.  
"Try to sleep."  
"If there was cable TV, I would be feeling better."   
Doc laugh, amused. "The TV has disappeared three years ago." 

***

I dreamed a memory, which suited the moment. It was about the last moments of my trip into the future Zachariah had sent me years before. I was in an overgrown garden, where weeds sprouted from the cracks of a stone fountain and moss covered the ornamental statues. The hedges were dry and the bare branches seemed fingers ready to grab my clothes. The ground was wet and formed a muddy mess. A storm raged far into the sky, throwing some lightning that lit up the air.   
My alter ego was lying on the ground with the neck broken and his eyes were wide open, staring at me like a warning. This is your destiny, they seemed to say.   
Sam was standing next to the only hedge still alive. He was admiring a red rose, a perfect bud. He noticed me and gave me a smile, but I wasn't relieved, in fact I shivered. The light in his eyes was not the one I had always seen him shining in his eyes: that one was dark, evil. I knew that this was not Sam. It was the Devil smiling at me.  
Sam was worn by Lucifer.   
The dream didn't exactly retraced every moment of what had really happened. Sam was still there, looking at me with that blank look, while my mind did all the work and made me remember: as Lucifer told me that he understood my discomfort in talking through that vessel, through my brother; the story of how he had been expelled from Heaven for not having sworn allegiance to humanity as his Father wanted; my exact words when I insulted him by telling him that the only thing that differed from the sons of bitches who I'd hunted my whole life was the size of his ego.  
Then the dream seemed to get together with my memories. Sam moved, approaching to me, without looking down. _Whatever choice you make, whatever detail you alter, we will always end up here_ , he said. His words seemed inconsistent and lost in the air in a distant echo.  
As he continued to advance, his white dress broke as if it had always been fluid, revealing his naked body. The skin began to crack and flaps unstuck and fell to the ground. His body was now formed only by muscles, red and pulsating. A grin made its way on that monstrous face. He continued to approach, but I couldn't step back. When he was just a step away from me, Sam crumbled under my eyes and the wind blew away its ashes.


	4. Chapter 4

I didn't feel rested when I woke up and my eyes were moist. I blinked several times to prevent the tears from falling, then I looked around. It was dark outside. The only illumination came from a camping lamp hanging on the opposite side of the infirmary.  
I felt a weight on my chest. Since Zachariah had me back to reality after that leap into the future, I had re-established my relationship with Sam, fearing that, if we had separated, the future that was predicted would have occured. Then, seeing that things had taken a turn quite different from what Lucifer had predicted, I hadn't thought about the possibility that the situation could become reality. But I felt like the future had always been there, watching and laughing at my naivety, ready to reproach all with an "I told you so" as soon as it became a reality.  
I felt stupid, imprisoned in a year that wasn't mine, surrounded by people I had never seen before. Even Cas didn't look the same. I almost couldn't recognize him. Was it with because he had fallen? I wasn't totally sure, but if angels had their grace, they'd still had their powers, right? Did Cas have them? Or maybe he had lost the grace? Most likely he lost it, otherwise he would have already done its magic tricks to get me back on track. I remembered that in 2014 he was human. When I asked him what had happened, he replied: "Life."  
I laid awake until dawn, staring into space without thinking about anything. A tear fell on my cheek, but I dried it and pretended that nothing had happened.  
Outside the tent, the noise increased as the sunlight grew stronger, so that after a half hour from dawn there was already a steady stream. Shortly after, Doc came to see how I was. I mumbled a positive response, but he gave no weight to my reluctance in answering him. By now he had realized that that was the best he could get from me.  
He found out that the fever was gone and that the color of my face was almost normal. He changed the IV bag, then unrolled the bandage to check the wound. The knee was bruised and swollen and the edges of the cut. Doc cleaned the wound with saline and I gritted my teeth in pain when the knee began to throb. Then Doc started to bandage it all with a clean gauze.  
"You came to take my blood?" I asked, annoyed.  
Doc ignored my mood. "No. The last three tests have shown that you're clean. It's been twelve hours now, you're officially out of danger."  
No one spoke for a few minutes.  
"How's your memory?" he asked when he finished with my wound.  
I shook my head. " _Nada_."  
Doc stood up, approaching to check the wound on my scalp. "I hope you didn't have a concussion," he said.  
"Ew... oh my God," I sighed. What the fuck.  
"But most of the time it resolves by itself. In most cases, the memory loss is temporary."  
I grunted an indefinite response.  
"What's the last thing you remember?" Doc asked.  
I snorted. I had heard that question a few times already and I couldn't give an answer. I didn't want to feel like an idiot who didn't even know what day it was. But I also knew that I had to deal with it and that I owed an answer to Doc, who was taking care of me despite my hostility. I tried to think. "Um ... Sam in a coma?" I said. I was pretty sure that that was the last thing I remembered.  
"Sam in a coma?" Doc repeated.  
"Yes, after the angels fell," I explained, given Doc's confused expression.  
"Aw," he replied. Then he looked away. I felt like he was hiding something.  
"What?" I asked.  
Doc hesitated.  
"What?" I insisted.  
No reply.  
I had had enough. "I'm tired of being fooled!" I cried. "I ignored the whole thing, hoping for someone to give me an explanation, but it seems that here nobody cares about me!" Even Cas didn't give me an answer when I asked him about Sam. "Now tell me what the hell is going on, kid," I cried, "or as soon as I get out of this bed, I swear I'll make you regret that you took care of me!"  
"One thing at a time," he murmured.  
"Tell me!" I exclaimed, ignoring his words.  
He spent a few seconds before he answered. "The angels have fallen five years ago."  
I took a moment to process that information. "Five years," I repeated. I made a mental math. It meant that I was in ... 2018?  
"Several things have happened since then and I don't want to slam all in your face. One thing at a time."  
"I lost five years of my life?" I roared.  
"Apparently."  
I remembered the comment that he did the day before, when he laughed, saying that the TV had been gone for three years. I was hoping he was joking.  
The loss of memory didn't worry me at first. I could endure if I had forgotten the last six months, as I thought at first. But _five years_. No, I didn't want to believe it.  
"I'm sorry, Dean," Doc said, "but we will find a solution. We will fix everything."  
"Go away," I whispered, closing his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I want to stay by myself."  
I heard his footsteps leaving the tent. I sank into the pillow, hoping to fall asleep again. Suddenly my mind became tired and it was only with my last strength that I could keep the eyelids half-closed.  
The last thing I saw before falling asleep was Cas coming into the infirmary

***

When I woke up, I felt like I had slept for days. My mouth was dry. I rubbed my eyes and I realized that it was night.  
How many hours did I sleep?  
Someone was lying on the camp bed a couple of feet away. He was snoring as if he had some musical instrument instead of the nose. He turned his back on me, but I recognized Cas.  
I reached over to the nightstand, trying to grab the bottle of water to take a sip, but with a clumsy gesture I made it fall to the ground. The impact with the ground caused a dull but distinct sound.  
Cas growled and stopped snoring. It took a minute before he turned towards me, breathing heavily. "What happened? Is it the end of the world?" he tried to joke with his thick voice. I didn't laugh at the poor choice of words.  
"No, I just dropped the bottle," I said, pushing the sheet and sliding my legs over the edge of the bed. When the knees bent, the wound throbbed as if someone had laid a brick on it, but I gritted my teeth and pretended that nothing happened.  
"Oi, what are you doing?" Cas said, standing up, while I tried to reach the bottle on the ground. "You have to lay down, otherwise Doc will kill me."  
"Let him go to hell!" I whispered. I held a whimper when, as I was bent, the pain increased.  
"Come on, let me help," said Cas. He grabbed the bottle and put it back on the nightstand, then he glared at me. "You need to rest, otherwise you will never gain forces."  
"I'm fine," I growled, using all the strength of my arms to lift. When I managed to get on my feet, I found Castiel's face just a few inches from mine. The head began to spin and I staggered, but Cas managed to keep me straight, grabbing my armpits as if I were a baby.  
"Too fast," I said. Cas grunted in approval.  
I waited a few seconds to be sure that the head didn't spin anymore. I felt Cas' breath on my face and his hands - warm even if the t-shirt fabric separated them from my skin - clutching my chest firmly. They gradually loosened their grip, until I could stand by myself. I felt my skin burn where he touched me.  
"The Sleeping Beauty has got up" Cas said, amused. I had never seen him in such a good mood. The Castiel remembered was always dressed in a trench coat and a serious expression. If Cas smiled, 2018 couldn't be so bad.  
My left leg supported all my weight and began to ache. "Is there a pair of crutches around here?" I asked.  
"To do what?" Cas replied, frowning. "Don't even think about it, Dean. Standing is the best I can give you, you won't go wandering around with you leg in that state."  
"I've been stuck in bed for two days, it is much more than I could bear," I said. "I need to walk."  
He stared at me for some endless seconds, then sighed. "Alright, but only for five minutes!"  
He found a pair of crutches in a metal cabinet and I dragged myself out of the tent using them. Castiel followed be closely. Small reflectors - scattered among the buildings - radiated enough light for me to see just enough to limp without bumping into something.  
"Where are you going?" Cas asked.  
I shrugged. "Wherever, I just need to walk," I replied.  
He led the way in the gloom, while the crutches sank into the moist and soft ground. I felt slow and cumbersome and not in the great shape I claimed to be. But I really needed that walk after being stuck in bed for a long time.  
We wandered for five minutes, and we walked for no more than a few tents feet because of my pace. We walked passing among low wooden buildings built just a few meters away from each other. I figured they were the homes of those who lived there in the camp.  
Suddenly a thought crossed my mind. Since Cas and I were alone, he had to answer me if I faced him. I stopped.  
Cas turned around. He stared at me in the dim light of the headlights. "What is it?"  
"I want the truth," I said. I expected him to ask me what I meant, but he stood there looking at me, waiting for me to ask my question. I took a deep breath to take courage. "What happened to Sam?"  
He stood, staring at me without betraying any emotion for several seconds, then a corner of his mouth twitched for a moment. "What do you remember of him?" he asked. His voice was flat.  
"What do I remember of him?" I repeated, confused. I didn't know if I had to tell him about what I remembered of the future, when Lucifer took possession of Sam. "The last thing I remember is Sam in a coma," I said finally.  
His expression was surprised but at the same time confused.  
"After that the angels..." I stopped, not knowing how to deal with a speech that concerned Castiel so closely. "After they fell."  
Cas stared at me for some endless seconds. He raised bit his lip, then turned around. His feet revealed his nervousness. It looked like he was fighting against himself. When he turned back, his expression was determined. "Come with me," he murmured. "I'll take you to Sam."


End file.
